


Love me slow, hallucinating

by glossary



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Frottage, M/M, Magic, Masturbation, Mild Sexual Content, Monster of the Week, Pining, Post-Nogitsune, Sexual Tension, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glossary/pseuds/glossary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer eats up the town that year.<br/>There are strange rainfalls at night, made up of warm water like cooling blood but sweet on the tongue. Peter takes to running into the forest every night, the roadmap of his veins sparking with electricity, alight by golden lanterns. Even in the dark the shades of green look saturated, false in their impossible aliveness: long swaying grass and soft moss covering the trunk of tall trees, moonlight through glossy green leaves and the scent of freshly turned earth. In the afternoons he leans out of the window of his flat and inhales deep to swallow the smell of hot asphalt and growing things.<br/>Inevitably, he gets hungry.</p><p>Or: After the Nogitsune, Stiles begins to unravel. Peter enjoys pulling the strings (so he can tie them together).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love me slow, hallucinating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withinmelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withinmelove/gifts).



> happy new year, everyone. this is meant as the steter secret santa for [withinmeloveresides1](http://withinmeloveresides1.tumblr.com/). a thousand apologies for the delay. i also apologise for not including the D/s bit but by the time i got into the swing of things it would've made things awkward. i hope the length makes up for it a little bit (and also the tardiness! do forgive me).  
>  the title is a line from _without you_ , by oh wonder.  
>    
> please see the warnings at the end if anything in the tags seems like it could upset you.

Summer eats up the town that year.

There are strange rainfalls at night, made up of warm water like cooling blood but sweet on the tongue. Peter takes to running into the forest every night, the roadmap of his veins sparking with electricity, alight by golden lanterns. Even in the dark the shades of green look saturated, false in their impossible aliveness: long swaying grass and soft moss covering the trunk of tall trees, moonlight through glossy green leaves and the scent of freshly turned earth. In the afternoons he leans out of the window of his flat and inhales deep to swallow the smell of hot asphalt and growing things. His next door neighbour grows petunias in tiny red pots, placed in a neat row in her balcony, and the splash of colour – peach pink and the purple of a fading bruise and yellow like storybook spring – is akin to a a stream of stars; when she gets home from work she lights up a cigarette and exhales all her tiredness in clouds of black smoke.

Inevitably, he gets hungry.

“I’m fucking hot,” Stiles says.

 _Yes_. Peter smiles at him.

Stiles is kneeling in front of the dead body, blinking sweat out of his eyes. It’s one of the worst days: walking outside feels like swimming through thick soup, and in a grudging concession Stiles has shed his layers in favour of an old, worn T-shirt, soft from a hundred washings. The nape of his neck is white and gleaming and shockingly bare, and Peter finds himself persistently distracted by the shift of muscle and tendon beneath his skin – even when he glances away with studied serenity the imagen lingers in his mind, like incense.

The body lays spread with one hand stretched, as if reaching up. The blue sundress it wears reveals pale knees and bare feet, the toenails painted yellow – legs apart but not obscenely so. It feels artlessly dramatic, something out of an overacted movie from the sixties, except tender new grass is threaded through the fingers as if the body had been there for ages, as if nature has had the time to embrace it. Its eyes are closed, heavy dark lashes like the swept of a fan resting on bone-white cheekbones.

Peter eats sugared lemons as he watches Stiles work, fidgeting with her clothes, divining bruises on the woman’s body – one on her ankle, a scratch on her elbow – and yet Stiles finds nothing strange, nothing out of place: merely the knot of scars that living leaves, smoothed over by age and the resiliency of youth. There is no blood, despite her unnatural paleness, and no tracks to follow. The constant summer rain has erased any scent that might have been left behind.

When he’s done Stiles gets up and walks next to Peter, to lean against the same tree, breathing slow and deep as if trying to calm his rabbit-quick heartbeat. A bird trills a long high note and the forest shudders with the sudden exhalation of the wind. Peter tilts his head back to watch as a murmuration of starlings take flight, blue-black wings soaring with inborn grace. Stiles lets out a little sigh and Peter shifts unthinkingly, leaning towards him because there is an openness revealed in that tiny sound that’s like sliding a knife into its sheath: the memory of the edge lingers. Their arms touch and, as always, an unsettling sort of awareness keeps Peter still. On his tongue the sugar slowly gives way to acid.

“I really wish serial killers would take summer breaks,” Stiles says in the end.

Peter stops licking his fingers, taking his index out of his mouth with an almost obscene pop, and laughs.

“It’s the urgency of purpose,” he says pleasantly. His skin is on fire where they touch – no, not on fire – but melting, and slow heat gathers low in his belly like the beginning of a star. Sometimes he wishes to be a creature of less violent wanting, or perhaps a man who is consumed by sweeter longings, but then Stiles knocks his head gently on the trunk of the tree, baring his throat, and he forgets about it.

On the way back, Stiles realises his knee – visible through a rip in his jeans – is covered in dirt. He rubs it absently, long clever fingers unkind on his own skin, thumb catching a little on the jut of bone. One corner of Peter’s mouth quirks up when he notices that even that secret part of him, rarely allowed into the sun, has a smattering of freckles.

* * *

Here’s a secret you can keep in your mouth: men rarely look at their shadows, except when they break. Then they can’t look away.

They have a pack meeting that afternoon, sitting in a loose ring, showing their teeth and their bellies. He watches Scott and Derek arguing, flashing their eyes like they’ve got a secret language underneath all the screams, and thinks they deserve each other – that they all deserve each other, that they exist in a network of veins. Pulling apart would break them, but still they try because that’s their nature: Lydia, whose luxurious hair and dark eyes remind him of a mermaid; Isaac, sinking deep and pretending he knows how to swim; Kira, steady as she goes; Derek, who doesn’t think he deserves to have someone hold his hand in the dark; Scott, unfalteringly noble. Stiles. Stiles.

Stiles.

It goes like this: they’re talking about the woman in the blue dress, everyone arguing over each other. Peter’s quiet, watchful, sitting a little behind Stiles so he can stare without being overwhelmingly obvious ―it would be a drag if Derek chose to have an attack of morality and discouraged Peter’s inclination for the most interesting person he will ever meet― and so he can see, with perfect clarity, Stiles reaching out to rub his arm every few minutes, as if dispelling a ghost. The pizza arrives while Lydia grinds Isaac under her metaphorical heel for picking a fight with Stiles, and she takes the opportunity to ruffle the soft hair at the base of his head, absentminded like old fondness can grow to be.

Stiles’s body language is a thing of beauty: he stutters, hand jerking back, and then stills for a moment that last forever. Lydia moves away, thoughtless, and stands. Disappears from Peter’s sight as an actress exiting the stage might, and instead there is Stiles, who after an agonising second reaches back and touches exactly where Lydia did. Peter wonders if he feels it burning underneath, if it’s possible for him to pinpoint the spot with the exactitude of a grave. Wonders if it hurts like a scar – a haunting of the skin, and the heat the glow of simple want: _don’t move away_.

That night he steps into his balcony, barefoot and bare-chested. His neighbour is smoking again and he watches the haze of smoke slowly disperse, watches her kneeling in front of her petunias as if she’s counting the petals. A vine is beginning to cover the side of the building in a thick carpet, threads of green knitting a heavy blanket over red brick. He listens to her talking on the phone with her girlfriend, rough voice going soft with tenderness, while he eats sourdough. There’s something comforting in existing so close to love, the same impulse that pushes you to attend a play – the intensity of feeling, with none of the compromise.

It excites him, the thought of it. Probably Stiles wouldn’t mind being bruised, if it’s the price he’s got to pay to be touched – to be noticed and kept. There is war and blood and fire between them, a red string that stays tied out of pure stubbornness and the weight of history, but it’s very hard to not return honest affection (and whatever else this may be called, it is true). His bed feels cold and lonely, too big like a raft adrift at sea, sheets twisted around his knees, so he puts two fingers in his mouth and jerks off. His toes curl. Behind his eyelids sparks shatter like a bullet breaking glass.

This is true.

* * *

Next is the man with the flower crown. He’s resting against a tree, the sharp curve of his cheekbone pressed against a patch of moss. It’s not an actual flower crown, of course, not the sort little girls braid in endless spring fields – the blossoms, tiny and white, begin to appear in the moss and slowly a few makes its way into the man’s hair. They bring Lydia with them this time, who reaches out a hand as if to smooth a lock of hair from the man’s forehead, and desists halfway. Peter helps Stiles get up, gripping his elbow and then briefly touching the small of Stiles’s back, a there-and-gone brush that nonetheless makes Stiles stand rigidly in place for a book-long moment.

“Thanks,” he says. Licks his lips and Peter’s mouth goes dry. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” says Peter.

And then there’s the other woman, the one with the eyelids painted with glittery lavender eyeshadow and blue lipstick, wearing the sort of skirt that flirts with the wind and offers tantalising glimpses. They all go check out that one, scrambling to fit into Derek’s car. Stiles sits next to the window, and Peter’s at his side before Scott can argue – Lydia calls shotgun and graciously deigns to share the space with Kira – so Scott allows Isaac on his lap. The air conditioning is broken because Derek slammed a monster’s head into the dash last week, so everyone cranks open their windows while Lydia fiddles with the radio, but Stiles still shifts awkwardly every few seconds, because it’s so hot his skin sticks to the leather seat. Peter can smell him, hormones and shampoo and sweat, the faint fizzy note of the soda he’d been drinking before getting into the Camaro. Loneliness.

If he were a better person he would speak up. Would lean close to Scott and whisper, like a girl cursed to talk in snakes and toads: _I know you remember the blade, and your blood, and his steady gaze – but so does he. Be kind to him. You hold his heart in your hand like a bruised peach_. Lydia, who adores Stiles with the secret warmth of kinship, tries to give him space because it’s what she would want (only they don’t share everything; Stiles never wants to be alone). Kira doesn’t know him enough to look at the shadows pooling between his teeth, and Derek bleeds ceaselessly – any attempt at closeness would tear him apart like dandelion fluff.

Peter is not a good person. Remembers that freckled knee and leans against Stiles, shoulders brushing. Underneath all that skin like rice paper there are fragile bones that he almost wants to break. There’s a sense of intimacy summer brings, he thinks, a desperation for contact that hurts after a while and so does the sun. He stares at Stiles’s bare wrist, the naked vulnerability of it as the heartbeat, just barely visible, quickens. Listens as his respiration stops for five whole seconds.

Another woman, blond hair cut into a short blond bob curling around her ears. Half her body is submerged into a shallow stream. She looks defiantly elegant despite everything, red blouse and silk stockings, and when they pull her out they find the grass full of blossoming flowers, like the outline of a body the police always draws. A bird lands trustingly at the edge of the water and drinks, unperturbed. Peter stands behind Stiles, blinking in the early morning – the sun isn’t properly out, and though the humidity remains the heat hasn't exploded yet. There’s a smattering of beauty marks on Stiles’s neck that he finds endlessly fascinating, like a child making up constellations half-asleep.

He has a dream that night, and it attacks him with violence. In the background he can hear his neighbour on the phone, the little click of her nails on the petunia pots, the slow exhale of cigarette smoke. Ten seconds before he’s eating almonds soaked in rosewater and honeyed dates, thinking about Talia in middle school, at her cruellest, and ten second later his eyelids drop and his head fills with the fog of sleep. He’s running through the forest, he thinks, the forest the way it is nowadays―aggressive in its vitality, shockingly alive, green and bright and thriving, flowers dripping everywhere, long languid petals that tickle your ankles and grass wet with dew between his toes. In the strange logic of dreams it’s not strange at all to go barefoot, because he’s chasing something – someone – he’s chasing Stiles, who is wearing clothes but looks unashamedly naked because it’s possible to see through his milky skin, down to the glowing bones beneath.

The trees rustle. Faraway a wolf howls, a question― _are you there? Who are you?_ Peter’s throat burns with the urge to answer except he knows if he does it will scare Stiles away – and then he gets confused about if it’s Stiles at all, the way the shadow flickers like a candle, nothing but a hollow thing he’s filling with his own longing – longing – wants to catch up and eat him up in one gulp, down him like a shot of vodka. He wakes up.

It’s hot. What a surprise.

He doesn’t go to Derek’s, whose place ―it certainly cannot be called a home― has become the default hangout. His head feels strangely stuffy, like taking a nap in the middle of the day and being disoriented afterwards, as if you’ve stepped out of time. Peter goes back to bed, still naked, and thinks about masturbating but in the end it seems like too much effort. Still, he’s rocking absentmindedly into the mattress, half-lidded eyes fixated on the wavering sunshine hitting the wall, recalling every last moment of his dream and committing it to memory, when there’s a knock on the door. A moment of hesitation, and then – another jerky string of knocking.

Peter kneels on the bed, head tilted at an angle as he tries to listen. The rabbit-quick heartbeat is achingly familiar. His pupils dilate like ink spilling on paper.

He pulls on the pyjama bottoms before opening the door. It’s too early for that kind of warm welcome.

Stiles looks achingly tired. There are shadows under his eyes, pale lavender like a blossoming bruise, and the mess of his hair is sticking up every which way. Backpack in hand. His sleeveless shirt bares the secret roads of his veins, a startling blue under gossamer skin. Peter thinks about taking him to bed and resting heavy and sure above him, grinding him down until there is nothing but the pulsing, vulnerable knot of loyalty and sarcasm that Stiles is. Until he surrenders to Peter utterly.

“Yes?” he says, dry-mouthed.

“Hey,” Stiles says, flailing – no, he’s waving. Every movement of his feels terribly accidental, with the manic chaos that surrounds him, but there’s beauty in the constant motion, a kind of kinetic poetry. “Hi. Hey. Um, can I come in?”

Wordlessly, Peter moves aside so Stiles can pass. Stiles’s trainers squeak a little on the polished hardwood floor, but after some uneasy fidgeting he launches himself onto the sofa and more or less settles down. Peter asks if he’d like some iced tea and Stiles says yes, so there are a few minutes of silence while Peter gets glasses and ice from the cooler. The iced tea is good, slow and sweet on the tongue. It makes his mouth go pleasantly numb. Peter hands Stiles a glass and sits down at his side before there’s any chance to squirm away, knees knocking together, their bare arms bumping. Stiles’s skin is dotted by beauty marks and freckles, some of them little more than faint dust. It’s interesting to look at. It makes Peter want to hold him down and count them, draw imaginary shapes with the tip of a finger.

They don’t talk at first.

There’s the kind of background noise you might expect in Beacon Hills – some light traffic, cheerful pop music in the distance, birds trilling. The everlasting rustle of tree leaves. It’s not the kind of neighbourhood that allows grass sprinklers, mostly filled by young people who consider pasta gourmet food and subsist on coffee and cigarettes, but the balconies are nice, there’s a laundry room and the lack of divisions give the illusion of a lot of space, in exchange for a single room. Peter doesn’t mind because it means he can get out of bed and walk straight to the ‘fridge as soon as he wakes up. For the first time he finds himself wondering how someone else might consider his space – there’s the unmade bed, of course, some clothes thrown on the floor. A telly, but the remote has been lost for a while – a radio that’s turned off, a tiny kitchen separated from the rest of the room by a countertop, and books overflowing every bookcase and shelf, grouped next to the bed and the sofa, a few scattered in odd places like above the ‘fridge or on the table where he drops his keys.

It feels kind of naked, too bare and clean. Peter drinks more iced tea.

Stiles clicks his fingernails on the glass. “This is good.”

Peter finds himself strangely unsure about what he should say, so he keeps quiet. Stiles bites his lip – lets it go and it gleams, pink and wet – and then rearranges himself so he’s turned towards Peter, body leaning forward eagerly. His eyes are bright and focused. Heat begins to gather, low in Peter’s belly.

“You didn’t come to Derek’s today,” Stiles begins, and then stops. Peter stares at him, honestly bemused. Stiles seems frustrated but plods on: “I mean, you’re always there.”

“Yes,” Peter says slowly. “I chose to stay in today. Is something the matter?” Maybe it’s a new body. By now they’re beginning to lose its shine, except as opportunities to touch Stiles in the bird-quick manner he’s developed, clever and brief. There’s never any blood, and the killer never leaves tracks, so he’s not sure how he’s supposed to actually help – surely Stiles could investigate by himself, recruit Scott or Derek if the need arose…

“No,” Stiles says after a beat. “No, nothing’s wrong. That’s not what – I mean, I just thought. I mean. I know it was presumptuous of me, I just. You’re _always_ there so I was just, yeah, just checking… I mean so far the only victims have been human but you sort of fit the age range so I was making sure…”

Oh.

A burst of warmth floods Peter’s heart. One corner of his mouth quirks up and he can feel his expression losing its stiffness, his eyes going liquid and sweet.

“You were worried,” he says. He uses his free hand to touch Stiles’s thigh – moves away almost immediately, but he knows the ghost of heat lingers behind because Stiles shifts a little. “Nothing’s wrong. I felt like staying home today, that’s all.”

“So I see,” Stiles manages, and gulps down more iced tea, then wipes his forehead and ruffles his hair. It sticks straight up. 

They look at each other. Peter feels the throb of summer right beneath his heart, like an unfurling flower.

Peter remembers Stiles when he was (not himself) sick. It was a peculiar thing to watch – those mannerisms so familiar, the spastic movements and the intense, bright-eyed stare when something interested him, turned dark and bruised and tired, frenetic in its hate, its emptiness, the wounded set of the mouth like a mad dog attacking anything that tried to be kind and underneath it all those bones, fragile and young and innocent, despite it all, somehow clean and true. It’s not that Peter wants Stiles to be _good_. But he does want him to be _Stiles_.

“I wouldn’t mind company,” Peter says, lashes lowered and thoughtful. Stiles blushes a little – it startles the hell out of him – Stiles blushes a little, a splash of red creeping up his throat and kissing his cheeks, and then nods, rubbing his neck nervously.

Research is an art, you know – like assembling a dead body out of old bones. Peter doesn’t mind it, even though he lacks the inclination for it. Mostly he dedicates himself to the pursuit of knowledge because he enjoys knowing things, and because sooner or later it becomes useful. Still, it’s a delight to watch Stiles when he forgets himself, chewing up his marker and making notes on a notebook, his handwriting cramped and full of looping lines that occasionally become little more than scratches when he gets excited. There seems to be a system there, and Stiles doesn’t have any trouble reading it, so Peter stays quiet and helps out where he can, reaching for books that Stiles might find useful: basic earth magic, wood spirits, sacrifices.

They don’t find anything. Peter remains unsurprised.

At around four Stiles gets hungry enough to ask for a sandwich. Peter serves him _nasi goreng_ and fruit salad without a word, spoons clinking against the plates like tiny musical chimes, and halfway through dinner he realises he’s knocking his ankle on one of the legs of the table, which Stiles is watching with bemused interest. Slyly, Peter curls his fingers over Stiles’s wrist. The resulting jump is very startling.

“Are you okay?” Peter says politely.

“Y-yeah. Sure. I’m fantastic,” Stiles replies, and stuffs his face some more.

He keeps coming back. Next week, after they’re done with the body – this time a man half buried beneath vines, his arm sinking slowly into the strangely pliant trunk of a tree – he drops by, clutching a heavy backpack and carrying a supermarket plastic bag from which he pulls out chocolate ice cream.

It’s almost painful, how easy it is from there.

His mother used to say that all living things wore their hearts on their sleeve – that holding out a hand and saying hello was the first step towards caring, and that road led to dark burning places where gods were unkind. Stiles comes back because Peter touches him, but also because they talk. As he becomes less uncertain about what’s appropriate, Peter begins to brush the nape of Stiles’s neck when he walks behind, thinking about the delicate play of flesh and blood. They never sit too far apart, and sometimes there are playful jostles of ankles and knees because neither can respect table space. Stiles has stopped startling when their fingers bump as they reach for a pen or a book, but he never moves apart first.

Above it all, those eyes. They’re very pretty, actually – wide and dark like a doe’s, clear and hopeful. One afternoon where the sky is flooding red and dripping light Peter brings him out to the balcony so they can people-watch, and Stiles tilts his head to peer at the neighbour’s petunias. A ray of sunshine hits his face at the perfect angle for his eyes to seem aglow: a strike of lightning hits Peter, low in his gut and unfurling like the roots of a tree. It’s a misstep, probably, but sooner or later you swim with the sharks or you drown.

(There is blood in this, the sea of longing.)

Peter kisses Stiles. It tastes a little like the fruit they’ve been eating – like peaches and cream – and underneath it there’s a lick of medicine, probably Adderall. He can smell the warmth of Stiles under the thin, loose clothes he’s wearing, the faint tang of shampoo and toothpaste, and better than everything else combined there is Peter himself, sharp and excited and proprietary, hanging like a dangerous cloud hangs about a fire: _within this there is something burning_.

They breathe together for a moment as they come apart, and then Stiles blinks – like a child wiping sleep away – and takes a step back. Then another. The door slams closed and Peter stands alone.

* * *

 It makes his mouth bitter.

In his dreams there’s the evergreen forest, and he’s standing in a river – it might even be the river where the sharply dressed woman was found, in that hazy way of dreams – the water laps shallowly at his ankles. The shadows look strange, the way it might in an eclipse – the deep inkiness taking on a blue cast, and the green startlingly noticeable. Behind him there is someone, resting a forehead on his back, and Peter feels an old fondness run through him. A hand curls carefully around his stomach, resting just above his belly button, and Peter covers it with his own.

In the quiet, the river rushes on.

He turns around, ready for an embrace or a kiss or everything right there at the edge of the river, and experiences a moment of pure confusion. There is a glowing shadow in his arms, and it breaks apart like smoke – his fingers tighten thoughtlessly around the hand he’s got captured – it flickers and for a moment there is a woman, long hair swaying in an invisible breeze, and then with a shudder it settles into the lean bones of Stiles. The eyes slowly regain colour and bleed gold. Peter leans forward, transfixed, and then he wakes up.

It feels like failure. He understands patience and the importance of waiting until the right moment to strike, but it’s been a long time since he last felt the satisfaction of blood on his tongue and flesh giving way under his claws. It leaves him impatient and short-tempered and alone, nobody with whom to share the sofa and certainly nobody to try the buttered potatoes. It always made him want to lick Stiles’s fingers afterwards, and once he was alone he had to stand in the shower, cold water dripping down his back and fingers tight around his cock, but he still liked it. Still likes it.

He hates rejection.

It hasn’t happened often but it has happened. Peter likes the smart ones, the clever ones, the ones with words who climb out of their mouths like they’ll go supernova if they don’t, and sometimes they’ve got it together enough to realise that having an affair with him is not the best idea this side of the universe, to say the least. Peter is fantastic in bed and disposed towards the all-consuming but long-term relationships leave him a little cold. There’s the expectation of intimacy, of sharing clothes and space and secrets, and Peter counts his misfortunes and his triumphs the way another man might count precious jewels: on his own, quiet and careful.

It makes him – makes him ―

Faintly miserable.

Stiles never talks about it. They meet sometimes when everyone’s over at Derek’s and sometimes their gazes happen to cross while Stiles is arguing with Lydia about ancient Sumerian and Peter is teasing Derek, but Stiles always looks away first. Peter goes home and eats until his stomach hurts, goes out and picks up a girl, pretty and in her twenties, visiting home from college. He’s charming, buys her a cup of tea from that tiny shop squished together between the second hand bookstore and a tattoo parlour, and she spreads herself open for him with an eagerness that speaks about the sort of company she keeps: uncultured children, learning to walk without holding a parent’s hand for the first time, interested in alcohol and sex and with none of the subtlety needed to truly seduce someone. He looks at her straight in the eye when she speaks and at the end of the night they do it in her car, an old creaky thing surely inherited from a family member.

Peter makes her come twice and doesn’t give her his number.

There are two new bodies that week, as if whoever is killing is sharing Peter’s feral mood – both women, one found in a bed of flowers under a bridge and the other high up a tree, slim arms caught in the vines braided around her wrists. She’s wearing a cute little dress, showing off the smooth skin of her thighs, and as she sways slowly it almost looks pretty, as if she’s asleep.

In his dreams: Stiles, Stiles, Stiles. They get crazier the more Peter misses him: glowing white clouds spread in the sky. It looks like the negative of a photograph, all the shadows strange and luminous. A fine summer rain wets everything and Peter chases a Stiles that is not Stiles: the Nogitsune, a spring in his step and leaving behind the sound of his laughter like perfume. He stops that dream when he finally catches him and sinks his claws into Stiles’s gut: black blood leaks out and Peter struggles a little because he’s stuck in the ribs, but finally the bone gives under his ministrations and he opens Stiles completely. The shadow scrambles away and when Peter looks back Stiles is whole and unharmed, and takes a deep breath.

Peter curls up at his side and watches him sleep. The next morning Stiles is at his door again.

He bites his tongue and says, in that perennial pleasant tone, “Yes?”

“Hey.” Stiles looks at him and then away, and back again. “Hey. I thought I could – um – can I come in? Thanks.”

Before Peter can tell him no he’s ducking under his arm and stepping inside. Nothing’s changed, of course. For some reason Stiles smells mildly relieved.

“How can I help you?” Peter says, sharper than he means to be.

“I wanted to – to talk,” Stiles blurts out. “About. About before. Um. When you…”

“When I kissed you, you mean,” Peter corrects silkily. He feels brittle and fierce all at once. “I realise my attention was unwanted. You don’t have to worry about it,” he says with all the arrogance of a king. “I assure you I do not pine like a lovesick child after you.”

Stiles flushes a little. “I know – I knew that. It’s just that – you startled me, and then when you didn’t talk to me afterwards I thought…” He trails off, as if hoping Peter will complete the sentence.

Unfortunately for him Peter is holding onto his dignity with a white-knuckled grip and merely contents himself with arching an eyebrow. “You thought what? That I’d keep crawling after you even after you rejected me? That doesn’t seem like me, does it, Stiles?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He’s got an odd look. “Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s why you and I began to hang out, even. It’s just that it took me by surprise,” he repeats. “But looking back, yeah, I mean, why else would you…” His hand, hanging at his side, trembles weakly and then he brings it up to rub the back of his neck. Peter follows the movement like a hungry wolf and only realises that Stiles noticed when the teenager coughs, as if he’s choked on his own spit. His eyes are wide. “Wow. I’ve got to tell you, there’s a bunch of stuff making sense now…”

Peter crosses his arms. “If you’ve finished, then I’d like to be alone, please. I was busy.”

“Oh.” Stiles jerks forward, thrown. “Oh, yeah. Of course. You’d never kicked me out before,” he says over his shoulder even as he scrambles towards the door. “I guess because you – uh – yeah. Um, so I’m just going to ―” He opens the door and stands in the doorstep, suddenly motionless. Peter tries to crowd him so he’ll hurry up and leave already, but then Stiles closes it and turns around, staring expectantly at Peter as if waiting for something.

“Stiles,” Peter begins pointedly, and that’s when Stiles kisses him.

It hurts because their teeth knock together – Peter thinks at first Stiles is attacking him in some dementedly convoluted way, but then Stiles yelps an “ouch!”, all embarrassed and contrite, and in the two seconds where they look at each other Peter listens to that crazy-quick heartbeat, rabbiting away, and lunges. Stiles’s back hits the wall and they’re standing really close in Peter’s cluttered foyer. They’ve got to move away when they accidentally stumble into the coat rack, and Stiles begins to laugh and Peter is so happy that he decides to abandon his subtle vengeance plan. Maybe Stiles rejected him but then he took it back so it probably doesn’t count.

That first time, they don’t fuck.

Mostly Peter undresses Stiles like he’s wanted since forever and kisses him everywhere. It turns out that Stiles is particularly sensitive and peculiarly shy – he says it’s because he’s a teenage with shaky self-esteem on a good day. Peter supposes that’s a rite of passage in their culture but to be honest he can’t remember ever not liking himself. Even when he was young he knew his own worth and better than that, he could see when someone recognised it. The first time someone fell in love with him and told him “I adore you,” it felt like his due.

“I have pretty much never been less surprised by anything,” Stiles says frankly when Peter shares this thought.

He doesn’t say much afterwards. Apparently it’s hard to talk when Peter is kissing his way up his spine, touching delicately every bump of bone underneath Stile’s skin.

It’s kind of exciting, to make Stiles need him. They never talk about it but it’s evident that Peter is his only source of comfort, that his father is constantly absent and that Scott and he will never be what they once were. Allison’s loss is recent if scabbing over slowly, but Scott has experienced the crazy all-consuming taste of first love, and although his relationship with Kira is going slower if arguably deeper, he can’t walk back and climb all those fences. They’re trying to find their footing, exploring the unfamiliar edges ―Stiles who dislikes sleeping in the dark, Scott who attacks every responsibility the way some people approach war: fight until death or victory― but it’s… strange.

Peter hears all about it while he makes gnocchi for dinner. He sprinkles the flour on top of the warm potatoes, puts the egg in the centre and stirs it, then kneads it. He likes the give of the dough under his hands and he likes Stiles fiddling with the radio, trying to find a good song to leave it on while simultaneously reading a book about land ownership (in the magical sense, he keeps adding every time he mentions it). While Peter cuts the dough Stiles rambles about the history of circumcision, which is actually fairly interesting. By the time he’s putting the small pieces in hot water Stiles is drawing to a close, humming along to the radio and staring out the window.

“What the heck does your neighbour smoke?” he asks, abruptly stopping mid-sentence.

“I don’t know,” says Peter, who’s more entertained by the freckles on Stiles’s throat. “A mix and match of herbs, I presume. We don’t really talk.”

“It smells good,” Stiles says, and Peter hums in agreement before putting his mouth to better use by biting gently Stiles’s collarbone. He’s rewarded with that tiny squeak that unfailingly drives him mad and they wrestle on the sofa for a while, until Peter has to get up to fish the gnocchi out of the hot water.

They don’t fuck that time, either. Stiles keeps putting it off and it’s not like it’s such a terrible hardship for Peter to make out with Stiles for hours while they ignore Netflix on the background, pausing to shove the post-its off the bed before rolling on it. They take naps, even, during the hottest part of the day, and Peter sweet-talks Stiles into taking off his shirt and his shoes, although he can’t win the argument about the jeans. There’s a trail of hair that disappears into the waistline of Stiles’s trousers and Peter gets so excited about it, he has to take a cold shower while Stiles laughs helplessly into the pillow.

“Who’s the teenager here?” he says gleefully when Peter comes back, fresh and still wet. Peter grumbles into the soft spot between his shoulder blades, and weighs him down until he falls asleep. Peter stays awake, enthralled by the pale shadows that Stiles’s lashes cast on his cheekbones, listening to the tranquil drumbeat of his heart and occasionally kissing Stiles’s slack mouth. He gets a kick out of watching him squirm and leaving him hanging, and seeing that annoyed sleeping face is priceless.

This is nice, Peter thinks. He can do this, if what he gets in return is Stiles reaching out to hold his wrist whenever they sit together, if Stiles openly smiles when Peter drops in at Derek’s. None of their pack-mates say anything, not because they lack opinions (an apocalyptic sign if there ever was one) but because they know it will do no good. So he feeds Stiles one gnocchi at a time, while he’s still muddled from sleep and all warm and cosy, because if it gets him what he wants is it such a problem? 

It’s not like it’s such a terrible hardship, Peter tells himself occasionally. It’s not like it’s a _chore_ , to be there for Stiles.

But it is _something_ , he realises the day he finds himself baking a pie. He rubs the butter between his fingers so it falls in sticky clumps. He dices the apples with a long sharp knife, pours the sugar carefully. He likes the smell of cinnamon, the ground nutmeg, the suppleness of the dough as he cuts it into stripes. Stiles appears just as he’s taking the container out of the oven and his pupils actually dilate. It’s the first time he allows Peter to give him a handjob, leaning against the kitchen counter and burying his nose behind Stiles’s ear – he doesn’t want to forget this, this afternoon and this food and the scent of Stiles excited and _wanting_ it. When Stiles comes Peter cleans him up with a napkin and gives him a slice of pie even though it’s still hot. Stiles eats everything and then licks the plate and his fingers, and Peter’s fingers, and then they go to bed where they cuddle while Stiles whispers an endless stream of words until he falls asleep.

(It’s quite hard to remain indifferent in the face of open affection.)

Peter feels full, slick, heavy. All his longing has settled down because he gets to have the cake and eat it, and it’s fantastic, and now it turns out he wants more. He remembers being a child and sneaking in the middle of the night for an extra slice of birthday cake ―Talia’s, he recalls, because she always got green frosting― and the crippling stomach ache he got as a result, because his healing hadn’t been all that fast back then. His mother, standing above him, wielding a wooden spoon and with a knowing glint in her eye, and the feeling of her cool hand on his forehead, that awful surety he was being taken care of and nothing could hurt him. It’s a lot like that.

That’s Freudian, Peter thinks, and then he stops thinking altogether.

It’s not about sex, not really, but it must be. And anyway Stiles thinks it’s about that, which is such a laughable concept it only denotes his youth. Most of the time Peter is indifferent to the fact Stiles is seventeen and counting because he more than makes up for it: he’s got ruthlessness and cruelty and loyalty on his side. These qualities are less common than you might think, and all together is more than a strike of luck: it’s a smile from god, saying _go ahead, Peter, eat the apple_ , and he really shouldn’t but the fruit is hanging ever so low.

The pie is delicious.

* * *

It burns up to ash like this:

It’s raining, that fuzzy warm rain that once in a while falls from the sky without rhyme or reason, and they drive down to the grocery store so they can buy what they need to make frittatas for brunch. Peter’s thinking about parmesan and black pepper, about fresh parsley, while Stiles sings along to the radio, still placid under the glow of a morning orgasm. Peter’s got a hand resting on his knee, good-humoured but possessive, and he’s wondering if after feeding him he might wheedle another few hours of naked lounging in bed. Stiles gets anxious when he feels he’s been away from research for too long, talks long and hard about all those men and women. Most of them have been identified by the sheriff as natives to Beacon Hills, and Stiles is obsessed with bringing the killer to justice.

Peter thinks it’s getting boring but he knows better than to say it.

The grocery store’s filled with people, mostly those in search of AC who also want to get food out of the deal: a win-win situation. Peter walks directly towards the vegetable section while Stiles skitters away to get his cereal, which he keeps at Peter’s because apparently his dad’s not supposed to eat it. When he’s done picking the best products Peter goes to look for him and finds him talking with a pretty teenage girl, blond and blue-eyed, her mouth a soft pink quirking eagerly in the face of Stiles’s spastic hand movements. Peter remembers him talking about the fragile self-esteem of teenagers and wonders if Stiles would still think so if he was able to see how she watches him, the first sparks of infatuation alight behind her eyes.

Peter doesn’t say anything about it, is pleasant to her even as he settles a hand on the small of Stiles’s back. Her eyes linger there for a long second before her gaze jerks up and she and Peter stare at each other, an unspoken message being transmitted: _this is mine, I will not give it up_. Her smile falters. She says goodbye to Stiles in a soft-spoken voice and takes her leave.

“She’s in my Lit class,” Stiles says cheerfully as he adds an extra pack of biscuits to the basket. “Nice, huh? How about that, Scott. I can make friends as well.”

“Of course you can,” Peter purrs, and hooks his finger on the belt loop of Stiles’s jean to pull him closer and plant a kiss on his mouth, lightning quick since they’re in public. Stiles is blushing, biting his lip, and Peter smiles at him helplessly. “We should get going,” he says pleasantly.

The frittatas turn out fine. Stiles eats in front of the telly, giving his full attention to Kim Kardashian. Peter likes her glossy eyes and her attitude but he also wants to kill her, kind of. Still, it’s mildly interesting and a thousand times better than those odd times when Stiles decides to torture them both with Jersey Shore, so he doesn’t complain. When both their plates are empty he begins nuzzling Stiles’s ear, his neck, mouthing his shoulder, until the other breaks away from the show and turns to him with wide-eyed.

“Again?” he says.

That’s cute. “Yes,” Peter says silkily, “please.”

“Um―,” Stiles stutters, and then Peter has a hand up his shirt, scratching over that sweet spot on his belly that always makes him shiver, and he acquiesces.

Stiles is beautiful, like an unfinished masterpiece. He has some growing up left to do, some angles still mildly awkward; he’s unsure inside his skin sometimes but mostly he plods ahead too fascinated by what he’s reaching for to remember kindness for his body. Peter likes it, the odd bruises Stiles always has because he bruises like a peach, the scratched hands and the papercuts, the scar Stiles got on his knee when he was twelve trying to skateboard with Scott. Stiles takes off his shirt and his jeans and stands barefoot, in his underwear, in front of Peter, who stares unashamedly. Stiles blushes less, now, is more assertive about what he likes and what he doesn’t, has stopped tensing up every time Peter asks him if he wants to try something new.

“If I do something you don’t want me to do,” Peter had said, all those weeks back when they were just starting whatever this was, “just tell me to stop.”

“What about you?” Stiles asked, brow furrowed. “What if I do stuff you don’t like?”

“I’ll say _please_ ,” Peter deadpanned.

Stiles began to smile, then. “Oh yeah? What if I can make you say _please, Stiles, don’t stop_? How should I take that?”

“You’re welcome to try,” Peter said slyly.

It’s different, this time. The first time they’re both completely naked, for one. But it’s less playful. More intense. Peter keeps looking at him, at the long expanses of white skin dotted by beauty marks, moles like cities marked in a map, freckles like a spray of stars. He kisses Stiles’s collarbone, the inside of his elbows, the spot behind his ear. Stiles melts slowly into the bed. Whenever they have sex he seems to slow down, talks almost slurred, utterly relaxed. Peter sucks his cock for a while and allows Stiles to pull his hair ― anyway, he kind of likes to feel those long fingers trembling every time he does especially well. He doesn’t let Stiles come, pulls away with a wet _pop_ and crawls up so he can rest his body over Stiles. Their cocks brush together and Peter sighs.

“Please,” Stiles begs. “Please.”

It’s not about sex, obviously.

(But the sex is really good. Unfairly good, taking into account Stiles is seventeen and has little experience besides what Peter teaches him and what he’s seen in porn.)

Peter kisses him: tongue slow and exploring, his hands pushing Stiles back on the bed by the hips so he can’t rock on Peter’s thigh. Their skin sticks together with sweat but Peter doesn’t mind – it almost hurts when they move too fast but that’s not a problem. Peter sits on Stiles’s belly and ruts lazily, watching Stiles’s pulse on his throat, listening intently to his heartbeat. Stiles is staring up at him, obediently still, one hand laid up, fingers twitching every once in a while like he wants to grab something.

“I want to conquer every unknown corner of yourself,” Peter murmurs, fingers curling warm and steady around Stiles’s wrists. He has to be careful about how he rocks because he doesn’t want to touch Stiles’s cock by accident and have him get off. “Knots of trees so close together it’s impossible to trespass, warm shallow seas full of dangerous brightly-coloured fish, deep valleys covered in tall swaying grass. I want to know you inside out.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says. His pupils are so dilated there’s barely a thin ring of light brown visible.

Peter comes.

It spreads over him pleasantly, like a ribbon being unknotted low in his stomach, like a wave draining out peacefully. When he’s done he lies down on top of Stiles, mouthing the other’s throat, pleased by the fluttering pulse he could feel on his tongue.

“I liked that,” Peter purrs.

Stiles is breathing harshly. “Can I come?”

“If you want,” Peter says, unconcerned, and falls asleep.

The dream he has that time is different.

Unlike all the ones before he’s a child. His mother’s got him balanced on her hip and they’re looking out the kitchen window at the endless field of green and small pink and yellow blossoms. When his mother turns her head to look at him he sees her eyes glow blue.

“This belongs to you,” she says, inhuman serenity in the set of her mouth. The slope of their cheekbones is identical. “You’ve got a heart just like mine, my little wild thing, and this is yours.”

And then a house going up in flames, in that strange way dreams have of switching. Peter jerks his eyes away and what he finds is Stiles and him, ages ago. The sun going in through the dirty windows. “Do you want the bite?” he’d asked, mouth dry, and Stiles had said no (the little skip of his heart) but someone in that room had got bitten anyway (and it keeps hurting).

Peter wakes up alone. It turns out he’s slept away all day.

Stiles ate the rest of the frittata before going home, he notices. There’s no note, which isn’t unusual, and no text on his phone, which is. His neighbour’s been smoking again – he can smell the fresh smoke – and Peter washes the dishes while he considers how he should proceed with Stiles. By the time they’re drying he’s got only the vaguest of ideas, all depending on how long it takes until Stiles contacts him again. Experience has taught him that he inevitably comes back, probably scared his only source of stable affection ―enthusiastic, constant affection― will disappear.

It’s one of those nights where he can’t settle down, so he decides to go for a run in the woods, the way he used to so often before Stiles became more or less a permanent fixture in his life. There are new scents, now, new animals moving into territory left unattended too long, and he takes great pleasure on scratching some choice trees and rubbing his hands everywhere as a warning. He gets to the place where they’d found the first body by accident – but it makes him think about the bodies. About the thing they had in common.

Namely Peter.

The name of that woman in the blue sundress was Tatiana. They were in the same debate group in high school and Peter enjoyed making her angry until she got wet, because he got off in the way she kept her arguments solid and concise even when he ate her out in the girls’ bathroom, knickers around her knees and sweat running down the valley of her breasts. All of them had had that same stubborn spark lighting up their gaze when they were alive but now that they’re dead they’re not much to look at. Mostly Peter’s not bothered. He feels a faraway fondness that melts into lukewarm appreciation, when compared to what he feels for Stiles. There’s the memory of her, of them, and not much else because now there is Stiles.

Peter stills.

Now there’s Stiles.

If something happens to him―

“I didn’t think you cared,” says the voice of his next-door neighbour. She’s sitting back on her heels, chin resting on her closed fist, watching him with those mournful Madonna eyes. “You didn’t go back to see any of the other spots. Is it because she was the first?”

“It was closest,” says Peter honestly, and then what matters: “Why?”

She looks exactly the same as she always does, a young woman in her mid-twenties with dark brown skin and wild black hair. Lips painted red, long lashes, nails an electric blue. She’s wearing one of those dreamy skirts that reaches the floor and a poet shirt, loose and comfortable. The gun in her free hand is strange, utterly out of place – she should be smoking in the balcony, as always, talking on the phone with her girlfriend, her mother, asking about a cousin or bargaining with her boss about switching a shift at work.

“It makes you feel old,” she says, steady as she goes. “It makes you feel old and tired, not having a home. Your feet bleed from all the walking, and you’ve got to go on. You understand, don’t you?”

Peter just looks at her.

“I’ve got magic in me,” she says. He can feel it gathering in the air, stilling the world to listen to her, all intent and belief and the surety of a fanatic. “And so did my mother and my grandmother. We had old places, back home – before we were colonised. It feels like forever ago and five minutes, all at once…” She offers him a little melancholy smile. Softens the weariness around that plush mouth. “I want a home. I want it to be mine. More than anything, that’s what I want – more than the stars and more than love and more than peace of the soul, I want to know there’s a bit of earth that will welcome me when I die. I want my bones to rot under the shadow of a tree heavy with fruit.” Her eyes, bright and dark, are filled with tears. “This land belongs to you and your blood, Peter Hale. Your father was born here and so was his father and so were you, and you will die here. You’ve bled and fought here, and made love in the dirt. But you gave it away, didn’t you?”

A sickening beat.

The witch says, “Someone ate your heart like ripe fruit.”

He tries to kill her. There is no other possible outcome to this encounter – she holds a secret that could destroy him like coin in the palm of her hand. That’s when her shadow strikes out, inky-blue and smoky. It smells the way her cigarettes always did, something perfumed and sleepy, not overpowering. He feels it creeping up his bones, filling his lungs, making way for itself into his heart – the magic sparks down her hands and she lowers the gun. She doesn’t need it anymore.

“I thought it must have been a long time ago,” she says quietly, almost like she’s sad for him. “I thought it was before the fire, that all softness was burned out of you by now and that I would have to content myself with the embers of what once shone greatly. You made an impression, you know. A lot of those people you’d been with, they had left Beacon Hills a while ago, but when I called pretending to be you all of them came back.”

A body belongs to itself. What other way is there? But there are ways to steal what’s not yours, just like there’s a way to destroy everything if you look at it from the right angle, and dreams ― oh, dreams ― what are dreams but desperate wanting trying to fulfil itself?

“Every single one,” she says.

What are dreams but a poor man’s treasure?

“And in the beginning,” she continues, “I got frightened because whenever I sent you a dream there was nothing but summer in you. But then I realised that’s what you love, Peter Hale, that’s what makes you adore him – the forest alive and thriving, and the heat that means he’s here and bleeding magic into Beacon Hills. He won’t ever be able to leave if he keeps doing that, you know?”

Peter tries to snarl. His face jerks. His hands are numb, halfway shifted – but her magic’s grip is sure and firm and with a sharp stab of pain, the claws recede. So do his teeth.

“I suppose you do,” the witch says, sorrowful. “You’re not the kind who lets go what you love.”

She makes him overflow. Pushes until all the hollows he’s gained over the years are filled with magic, and the taste of it is familiar – it feels like every dream about Stiles he ever had, the ones who left him in a frenzy. He recognises the awful longing that coats it, as if her very essence is dyed with despair and the world-ending determination to get what she wants, and wonders if that’s why her dreams settled so well into him – if she was so good at pulling what she wanted out of him because he was so good at pulling what he wanted out of Stiles. If they’re alike, kin.

A little laugh purrs in his throat before she cuts it short.

“I can’t keep you like this forever,” says the witch, wiping her face. Possessing someone is not an easy business, particularly a werewolf as old as him. It’s cost her. Her hands are trembling faintly. Peter supposed he could be glad about that, except she’s got no need to shoot him now. “So we’ll have to make this quick. We’ll kill Stiles together,” she explains, easy as morning tea and summer rain. Peter swallows back hate. “He’s too strong. Then I kill you. I’ll have to take care of your pack later, but with what I’ll gain from Beacon Hills, it should be no problem.”

She puts a hand over the tree closest to her, as if petting it. The sight makes Peter irrationally angry, which is stupid – it’s just a tree, like thousands of others in the forest, except that it’s _Peter’s_ and there’s only one person with whom he wouldn’t mind sharing, as long as he got what he wanted.

The witch walks up to him and takes his phone out of his pocket. This close her smell is overwhelming, dreams and power and myrrh and wet grass. Calling Stiles is the work of a moment, just pressing a button. The phone chimes once and then there’s a mumbled “hello?”

“Stiles,” Peter’s mouth says. He can’t feel his tongue, and breathing’s become difficult. “I’m in the woods. That place where we found the first body. You’ve got to come get me.”

“What?” Stiles sounds confused, and then uncomfortable. “It’s not really a good time…”

“It’s not about – before,” he forces out. He has to take a moment because his mouth’s bleeding and if he sounds off the witch will probably punish him. “About us. I just need – I want to see you, that’s all. It’s important.”

Peter listens to that breathing, dear and precious to him, and says – very quiet and heartfelt – “Please, Stiles.”

“Okay,” Stiles says immediately. “Okay. Okay. I’m coming. Um, do you – should I get someone else, is it ―”

“No,” Peter interrupts. “No. Only you. You’ve got to come alone.”

“Okay,” Stiles says soothingly. “Okay, I’ll be there. Give me – give me fifteen minutes and I’ll ―”

“See you soon,” Peter says, and the witch cuts the call. She’s giving him that sorrowful look again, as if he’s some pitiful thing that deserves her sadness. Peter daydreams about gutting her and eating her, all the soft bits first, while she prepares for the sacrifice.

He’s unfamiliar with the ritual but it’s not hard to gather what she’s doing. All sacrifices seem alike after a while. The witch makes a circle with sugared water on the ground and drops some dried herbs and flowers, and sits in the centre for a while, eyes closed, serene as the Virgin Mary. Her magic’s grip on him doesn’t falter but the numbness goes away, and Peter manages to bring out his claws again. When she opens her eyes he’s staring at her, completely focused and unmoving. He hears the small skip of her heart that means fear and a wave of satisfaction drowns him.

He thinks: _I’ll make you pay for this_.

It’s agony. He can hear Stiles scrambling through the trees, his mumbled curses when he stumbles and scratches his hands, the knees of his jeans dirty with grass. The witch, half-hidden in a deep shadow, tilts her head to watch him come and when he steps into the meadow they’re both holding their breath. Stiles blinks, squinting.

“Peter?” he says, voice lilting with a question.

“He can’t talk right now,” the witch says in his ear. Stiles jerks forward, arms wind milling like a child trying to scare away a fly. The white of his eyes is very visible. She smiles at him. “Hello, Stiles. We were waiting for you.”

“So I see,” Stiles says slowly. He glances at Peter, who makes his eyes glow and stays rigidly in place, rooted to the earth, chained by smoking magic. The myrrh is asphyxiating. “Do I know you?”

“Not at all,” the witch replies amiably. She looks fascinated by him. Peter supposes it’s understandable – Stiles, who is the key to Beacon Hills, must seem to her like a mirage, a miracle. “Although maybe we’ve seen each other around, once or twice. I’m Peter’s neighbour, you see.”

“With the petunias,” Stiles says.

The witch laughs. It’s a good laugh, strong and earthy. “Yeah. I like gardening. I like flowers.”

Stiles licks his lips. “Are you… were you the one…”

“The one who killed all those people?” the witch finishes for him. “Yeah. I was trying to find the right one, but… I suppose I was looking in all the wrong places.”

“Don’t you hate when that happens.” Stiles’s trying to get closer to Peter, trainers crunching old leaves, but when she raises the gun again he stills and raises his hands. “Hey. I just want to check on him. I’m not going to do anything…”

“No, you won’t,” the witch agrees. Her lovely face is a mask of iron-willed determination again, and she takes a sheathed knife out of her skirt. Throws it to Stiles, who manages knock it off course and then picks it up hastily from where it’s fallen.

“Sorry,” Stiles says sheepishly. His eyes are fixed on the gun.

“That’s okay,” the witch says kindly. “Please come here. Right in front of me. There’s a magic circle, can you feel it?” Her predatory gaze. “Come on. It’s nothing bad. Just a circle.”

Stiles obeys cautiously. Peter feels the moment he steps inside the circle, like ripples moving through the air – like a rock splashing into a still pond. Rings of energy dispersing. He clenches his teeth and leans forward – it hurts like breaking a bone but he manages. The witch glances at him over her shoulder and presses her lips together, before turning her attention to Stiles.

“Kill yourself,” she says.

Peter hurts everywhere. Her magic aches inside him, acid and lemon and winter, killing him slowly. It’s like walking on burning embers and shard of glass, but he raises a hand and reaches out to her. Her shoulders look tense, her posture brittle. He can smell her fear.

“What?” Stiles says, wide-eyed. “I – I don’t think that’s such a good idea. How about we talk about it? I’m a great negotiator, I promise, I don’t – why are you even doing this? Did Peter hurt you? Because you know the way to make yourself feel better is not going on a murdering spree…”

“He didn’t hurt me,” the witch says tiredly. “He just has something I want, and I have to kill you to take it. I could do it, but it’s better if you die by your own hand. Now, Stiles, unsheathe that knife and kill yourself, or I’m going to start shooting Peter.” She unlocks the safety, and the dramatic click fits the scene very well. Peter can appreciate a woman with an inclination towards theatrics. “Only half the bullets are laced with wolfsbane. It will be like playing Russian roulette, but sooner or later he _will_ die.”

Stiles’s eyes are frightened and unsure but he unsheathes the knife. It gleams in his hands, beautiful and terrible like a conquering queen and Peter _dies_ , it must be death because taking a single step has taken away years of his life and yet it doesn’t matter, he has to move move move, has to reach Stiles keep him safe, has to kill the witch – kill the witch – set on fire her bones and drop the ashes in the river so she doesn’t ever, ever come back ―

“I―” Stiles tries.

The witch aims and shoots at Peter’s knee. He unlocks his jaw, throws his head back and howls – Stiles gets a crazy look and raises the knife, jumping towards the witch. Somewhere a wolf howls back and the magic abruptly releases him – somebody is screaming, high like a woman – there’s another ripple in the air and Peter rolls awkwardly onto his side, crouching despite the pain, to see Derek dragging the woman away from Stiles, who’s out of the circle and following them. Scott peers at Peter, worriedly.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“No wolfsbane,” Peter says, trying to listen to the witch’s heartbeat. “I’ll be fine. What took you so long?”

“I told Stiles to hold on as long as he could,” Scott says guiltily. “We didn’t know if she was the one killing those people, and I wanted to know if we could help her…”

“It’s nice to know how much you worry about me,” Peter tells him, but he’s been over Scott’s ridiculous compassion for ages, and as soon as the bullet’s out of his body he’s up and walking towards Stiles.

Derek has the witch’s arms tied behind her back and a hand under her chin to keep it tilted up, so Lydia can examine her eyes. Despite the hour she’s immaculate, long red hair braided loosely and a light blue sundress, sandals glinting in the starlight. At her side Kira’s wearing a pair of jeans and one of Scott’s t-shirts and is clutching her katana. She and Stiles are talking quietly, heads bent towards each other. Peter licks the inside of his mouth and leans against a tree so his knee can finish healing.

“Just kill her,” he says, adopting his best unconcerned tone of voice. “She’s the one who was murdering all my exes.”

Scott boggles. “You mean all those people we kept finding were your…?”

“Once,” Peter says. “A long time ago.”

Lydia stares at him, still like a cat, and then glances at Stiles. A faint line appears between her eyebrows.

“She was trying to tie the land to herself,” Peter tells them. “Apparently I’ve got a connection with it, by virtue of being the oldest living werewolf in town. Killing people close to me was supposed to help her. Fortunately I got over all of them quite a while ago.”

“Why did she want to kill Stiles?” Kira asks, confused.

“A very important question,” Stiles says. He can’t seem to decide if he wants to look at Peter or at the witch.

“He was the first number she picked on my phone,” Peter says, unblinking. “Anybody from the Pack would have been fine.”

The witch lets out a little huff of laughter. “You don’t have anything to lose, Peter Hale,” she says roughly, voice tight. “It will eat you up unless you admit it―”

Peter straightens, eyes glowing and teeth sharpening, but Derek breaks her neck with a sharp twist of his hand and Lydia steps back, linking her arm with Kira’s. The witch’s body dissolves into vines and flowers buds, but all of them blossom so quickly it’s like watching the birth of spring in fast forward. By the time it’s done there’s a big pile of them, perfumed and sweet and brightly coloured.

“What the actual fuck,” Stiles says, eyes almost popping out of his head. It seems to express what everyone’s feeling because nobody answers.

“Isaac’s waiting with the car,” Scott says after a moment. “We should get going.”

So they get going.

It’s kind of surreal, the long trek back towards the road where Isaac’s idling. Kira and Lydia and Scott walk next to each other, talking in low voices about how relieved they are to have stopped the killings. Stiles follows them, silent, and behind him Derek and Peter march on. There’s a small moment where Derek looks at him for a long moment and seems on the edge of saying something, but Stiles looks over his shoulder as if to check if they’re still there and the opportunity’s gone.

Derek gives Peter a ride home. Halfway through Peter decides Derek’s constant hesitating is getting irritating and turns on the radio, and they listen to one of those strange stations that you can never find during midday, but the music’s good, upbeat but slow, fitting. At the end Peter says “thanks” and steps out, closing the car door behind him with what he hopes is a very final hint.

Advice from Derek. That will be the day.

His flat’s the same as always – a little messy, books everywhere, bed unmade. There’s food in the fridge and fruit in the kitchen and no Stiles and she almost killed him and he has to sit down on his heels for a second, hands flat on the floor, teeth bared. He doesn’t particularly care, usually, who does the killing but this one time he’s faintly jealous of Derek.

Peter would have made her hurt.

He takes the lemonade out of the fridge and drinks a glass. Then two. He’s contemplating how much of a drag it would be to heat up leftover bibimbap when there’s a jerky knock on the door, familiar. Peter’s gaze jerks up and he’s opening it a second later. Stiles offers him a nervous smile.

“Hey.”

Wordlessly, Peter opens the door wider and steps aside. That’s always his way with this child, he thinks distastefully. When Stiles walks by his fingers brush Peter’s wrist and he stretches his fingers as subtly as he knows how, trying to dispel the phantom heat.

Stiles finishes Peter’s lemonade glass without asking and stands at the kitchen counter, looking a little lost. Finally he looks at Peter and asks: “So you knew them?”

“Yes.”

Stiles takes a moment to absorb that. “You knew all of them.”

“Yes.”

“You were… involved.”

That one makes Peter smile. “Not simultaneously, but yes. All my paramours since high school, I believe – or most of them. The ones that lasted, relatively speaking.”

“Wow.” Stiles sounds honestly surprised. “Wow. You’re kind of a slut.”

Peter pushes Stiles onto the bed and climbs atop him. For once there’s no blood on him, so he doesn’t have to worry about Stiles complaining, and the feel of Stiles under him calms him. “Slutshaming isn’t nice.”

“I say it with my biggest admiration,” Stiles replies. There’s a jittery silence where Peter rubs his cheek against the nape of Stiles’s neck, cuddling him. Places a hand on the vulnerable curve of Stiles’s belly. It’s quiet except for the usual sounds of the town outside, which they’ve listened to together a million times. The open window lets in a breeze accompanied by the rustling of leaves. Then: “You’re not doing this out of kindness.”

Peter stills. “Doing what?”

“You know what,” Stiles murmurs. Peter’s claws come out and he scratches Stiles’s bare skin gently, without leaving marks. Stiles grabs his wrist and holds him.

“But I am being kind, whatever my reasons,” Peter whispers back. He’s acutely aware of the beat of his heart and the open line of Stiles’s throat. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Yes,” Stiles says. He turns around, wrestling with the messy sheets. The ghost of his mouth a kiss. “I just don’t know for what.”

Peter thinks about saying: _because I’ve got a crush on you_. Nobody else in the universe would call it a crush but he likes the word, likes what it makes him think about – a sort of slow-burning heat that gently grips your heart in a firm hand, tears it apart and crushes the pieces, until only the core remains: only what you are in the dark – the side that can withstand that intensity. Thinks about saying: _because I dream about you, with or without magic. Because I want to keep this summer and this room and this moment._

But he stays quiet and closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: the sincerity of peter’s regard for stiles is evident, but he is still taking advantage of stiles’s emotional state. peter thinks about the sexual aspect of their relationship as being enjoyable but mildly irrelevant despite the satisfaction it brings him – this is an opinion stiles doesn’t share, and there are signals despite him not vocalising his feelings. furthermore, peter gives the impression he’s interested in stiles merely in a sexual manner and that, should stiles reject him, he won’t continue touching him. as the author i can tell you it’s not the only reason stiles agrees to perform sexual acts but it’s definitely a factor, thus the dubious consent tag. read carefully and take care.


End file.
